I'm not anti-government nor am I politically-savvy. I read the headlines, I shake my head, I worry, and then I hope that somehow it will all get fixed. But there is one slice of government that often grabs my attention and leaves me seething mad and spewing venom, and that is the US Department of Agriculture. The USDA is involved in distributing food and nutrition guidelines (aka the food pyramid) to Americans, providing food to those in need, and assisting farmers with the production and sale of foods through financial means (subsidies). But a recent article in the NY Times has me (once again) wondering why our tax dollars are supporting an agency that is obviously operating under a huge conflict of interest.

According to the article, Domino's Pizza sales were spiraling downward. An organization called Dairy Management came in and helped Domino's create a line of pizzas with 40% more cheese, then created and financed a $12 million marketing program to promote the new pizzas. It worked, and sales grew. Who wouldn't love a cheesier pizza, after all, despite being loaded with saturated fat and calories? Turns out that Dairy Management is a marketing creation of the USDA. So they are finding ways to help dairy farmers sell more cheese through fatty pizzas, while at the same trying to discourage people from eating this same kind of food via anti-obesity campaigns and nutritional guidelines!

HOW ARE WE BENEFITING FROM THIS?

The article goes on to say:

In one instance, Dairy Management spent millions of dollars on research to support a national advertising campaign promoting the notion that people could lose weight by consuming more dairy products, records and interviews show. The campaign went on for four years, ending in 2007, even though other researchers — one paid by Dairy Management itself — found no such weight-loss benefits.

The USDA cannot serve both farmers and consumers in this manner. It is deceptive and confusing and, ultimately, a waste of our tax dollars. The reason the USDA is working so hard to promote cheese is that milk consumption has fallen in the US, so they are looking for other outlets for dairy. Maybe, just maybe, we don't need to be producing so much of it? (Particularly when a huge percentage of the population is lactose-intolerant.)

It's not that I want to see farmers going out of business, but I want to see a change in the way they are farming. Much of farming nowadays is just plain unhealthy: either animals are treated inhumanely and loaded with antibiotics, or crops are doused in pesticides and grown for use in processed foods. And the USDA supports it. So fine! Support it, USDA -- but make up your freaking mind. You can't support conventional agriculture and national health -- at least not the way you've been doing it so far. It's all wrong, wrong, wrong.

So I'm going to keep on making my minuscule statement by feeding my family the healthiest foods we can afford. Local, organic, fresh, self-grown if possible. Can change be made on such a small scale? I hope so, because it's all I feel I CAN do.

One of my all-time favorite books is A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson. It is his epic journey of hiking the 2,100 mile Appalachian Trail with an overweight, alcoholic buddy of his (note to self: hike this trail before you die, but perhaps with a more capable partner). In that inimitable Bryson style, it's chock-full of history and trivia on the regions he ventures through, and utterly hilarious in the jams he and his friend get themselves into. Yet, at its heart, it celebrates being outside.

For the last year, I've been walking in the woods every day. Rain or shine. I'm blessed to live in hills that get my heart-rate up, and benefit from choice urban paths that cut through the woods that edge our semi-urban neighborhood perched high above downtown Portland. I've seen pileated woodpeckers, deer, mountain views to die for, rainbows crowning Portland's rivers, and massive home-remodeling projects. I drown out the roar of lawn-crew leaf blowers with my iPod's music (that is surely, slowly deafening me, but somehow seems worth the risk). But what really happens on these walks is a daily centering and letting-go of stress. The leaves. The scents. The rocks and ravines. The birds. There is hidden beauty everywhere. I come home a different person. I am breathing more deeply and walking taller.

We often joke here in Portland that come fall and winter, we all go indoors and don't see our neighbors again until spring. Not me. I could easily use more water-proof shoes (I often wonder how trail-runners keep their feet dry), but I have a decent rain coat, and am a disciple of 'dressing in layers' philosophy. The calming beauty of the outdoors is just too good to give up for the long, wet and cold seasons that are knocking on our doors.

Friend 1: Okay. If I had an iPhone, I would totally be getting the GoodGuide app.

Me: Yes! I just read about this.

Friend 2: What's the GoodGuide app?

Friend 1: It allows you to scan products and see how they are rated based on various environmental and social factors. And GoodGuide is the go-to resource. Highly respected.

Everyone: Ooo aaah.

Friend 3: Yeah, but then it's going to take twice as long to do my shopping.

(murmurs of assent)

Friend 4: Good point.

Friend 5: Cocktail anyone?

Everyone: Ooo aaah.

So there you have it. How much do you really want to know? The app is free, so why not try it out? We'd love to hear your experiences since I barely know how to answer my flip phone and Renee doesn't even own one. The app currently rates personal care and household chemical products but is expanding to include food, toys, electronics and more. You can also get the information via texting, but I wouldn't know anything about that. I'm still waiting for carrier pigeons to make a big comeback.

Old paint, paint thinner, varnish, leather conditioner, wood wash, teak oil and empty propane canisters were among the many items that I hauled to the Metro Hazardous Waste depot the other day. (Sidebar: there's nothing freakier than driving down the interstate in a car loaded with items that read CAUTION! FLAMMABLE! because if I'd been in an accident -- BOOM!) Since we're moving across the country in (yikes) 16 days, I've been going through my checklist provided by the moving company. Item #3: Discard flammables, ammunition, cleaning solutions, paint, liquids, aerosol cans and propane tanks. Once I started looking for these items, I found stuff that I couldn't believe we still had lying around, like fertilizer! And wasp spray! Haven't used these things, ever? It felt great to get rid of them.

Some of this stuff I probably could have given to others to use up, but I'm in countdown mode. Must keep going through the checklist. (Dreading item #7: Disassemble particleboard furniture. Um, hello? Have you heard of IKEA? Let's be reasonable.) Back to waste. What I didn't need to cart to the depot were any cleaning products, because we mostly use vinegar and baking soda and friendly products like Biokleen. (Gasp. They wouldn't confiscate my Biokleen, would they?) It feels great to have gotten rid of all of that stuff, and I'm hoping we can minimize the amount of products labeled CAUTION in the future.

(Second sidebar: it feels great just getting rid of stuff period. We should all move every five years just to go through this exercise. And if you're looking for someplace to move to, how about Columbus, Ohio? Because, people, I know NO ONE. Boo hoo hoo.)

I had the pleasure of taking a walking tour of Old Town Portland today with a very well behaved and engaged group of third graders. It was a goregous fall day to boot! This was my first field trip as a chaperone. I learned a ton, and so did the kids. You should have heard them talking about architectural details like 'eggs and darts.' But do you want to know what I really liked about this field trip? The kids take mass transit. (Woe to the regular commuters on the 54 bus this morning who had the, um, pleasure (?) of riding with the whole class when they were super wound-up and excited). This is one of the cool things about living in the city -- that we have mass transit, and that the school utilizes it for field trips. Practice for real life.

And now it is time for a nap. Whew! I'm exhausted. I could never be a teacher.

It was like negotiating a nuclear arms treaty. There were trade-offs, back-room deals, glowering looks and, ultimately, money did exchange hands. I find that as my kids get older, it gets harder and harder to lure them away from their candy stash. After all, they pounded the pavement for that candy, and c'mon Mom, it only comes around once a year. Geesh. Yeah, but Halloween is just the beginning of two months of sugar-filled holidays. Let's save ourselves for birthday cake and pumpkin pie and Mexican wedding cakes, please? With ingredients we can pronounce? Plus, when there are 100 Grand bars in the house, I. cannot. resist.

So it comes down to inventory management. Some parents have had great success with the Switch Witch or the Candy Fairy or whatever your preferred nom de plume may be. Child brings home candy, picks a couple to eat and then the Switch Witch comes that night and swaps candy for a new toy. Done. I haven't tried that method because I'm pretty sure it wouldn't fly. And if Sunday was any indication, they are DEAD SERIOUS about the sanctity of their candy this year.

Like any good diplomat, I resorted to money. To utterly confuse them, I had them separate out their candy into various piles, like, Eh, Pretty Good, Must Have. Then the Must Have pile was separated into more piles! When we got down to about 12 pieces of I WILL DIE IF I DON'T HAVE THIS CANDY I offered to buy the rest for cold hard cash. Some of the favorite candy that didn't make the I WILL DIE pile is going into a 'surplus store' for a month. If they find they must have this candy, then they can buy it from me for $1 a piece. Ha, and they went for it! Suckers.

But it won't really ever come to that. They'll enjoy the candy they got to keep, and then they'll forget about the rest. All of those other aforementioned baked holiday treats will start appearing on our countertop, and before you know it the Smarties and Butterfingers will fade in their memory like yesterday's news.

Wanna know the score? One down, one to go. As in, my first grader's soccer season in now over. And my third grader's finishes this Saturday. Don't get me wrong. We love soccer! But after all these weeks, some of its charms have diminished. But, before we chant the season's final '2-4-6-8! Who do we appreciate?' let's take a moment to talk about de-stinking smelly soccer socks, and the cleats that foster the atrocious smells. With an email from Cathy:

Help! What to do about soccer socks? They are stinnnkkkyyyyy! Even after washing with a double dose of laundry detergent, oxygen bleach, and borax, and an extra rinse, they smell just awful. Hanging them out to dry helps the smell to dissipate, but with fall weather coming on, that will no longer be an option. They smell so bad that odor permeates the whole room that they are in. I've tried soaking them in borax solution, but that didn't help. Vinegar? Soaking them in baking soda? How do you do a vinegar rinse in a front-loading machine? The origin of the smell is clearly the stinky soccer cleats, so advice about those would be good too.

When I first read this email, I was a little stunned. Having two little girls who 'play' soccer has not led to such stinkyness, and for that I am grateful. By 'play,' I mean, it's all about the snack after the games. Although, as my third grader's season has shown, now that they play on a big field and have positions, they do a heck of a lot more running. So the stink may be just around the corner for us. Perhaps next season. But enough about me. Back to Cathy. Cathy mysteriously answered her own email with one line: 'Bac-Out has done the trick!'

Bac-Out is a product made by BioKleen. I know many people who love it. I have some, but am baffled by it. I haven't figured out how to use it. So please do share any tips for de-stinking soccer socks, cleats and power user tips with Bac-Out. Our stinks await!